Thursday, July 12, 2012

jack addams

‘We’ve
got seven cats,’ says the little girl, standing in the alley. ‘Seven cats and five
kittens. No – four kittens.’

‘Wow.
That’s quite a collection.’

‘I’ve
got a Barbie, but I cut all her hair off with some scissors so I keep her in a
sock. I can do flips on the trampoline. Have you come to see Jack?’

‘I
think so.’

‘This
way.’

She
hops round on the spot and dances back down the alley, her blond curls leaping
and shining in the sun. She’s like some perfect
elfin child, a Victorian fairy Photoshopped into an urban scene, skipping along
past the carcase of a discarded TV, a sofa in a crapped-up nest of weeds, a garden
gnome with jags of plaster where the head used to be, a mattress, a wheel, a
box of bottles.

I
follow her down a drop of concrete steps to the front door of a plain terraced
house. She ducks inside past a woman who stands guard in the doorway. The woman
has a mass of yellow hair piled up on her head like a hay rick; beneath it is a
black hair band that has slipped forwards onto the bridge of her nose. The Kohl
she has lined her eyes with is as thick as the band, so the effect is of a wide
black cloth tied round the top half of her head, like the Lone Ranger, or a
raccoon. She can only be forty, but without her teeth her cheeks have drawn in
to make her look sixty. She is wearing a red and yellow orchid print Caftan,
and smokes a cigarette intently, to the filter, in three drags.

‘Thanks
for coming,’ she rasps, flicking the fag off into next door’s garden. ‘It’s my
nine-year-old, Jack.’

I
follow her inside, through a cluttered hallway to a door at the back. She goes
to push the door open, but a man shouts from the other side.

‘Hold
on a minute. Old man in the way.’

The
woman sighs and stares at me, one hand holding on to the handle.

‘Father-in-law,’
she says.

Grunts
and scuffles from behind the door, until eventually the voice says it’s okay to
come in. She sighs again, and pushes through.

The
room is as grey and thick as the dirty brocade curtains drawn across the
windows. An energy-saver light bulb casts a rimy light over everything, over
the DVDs, the scattered clothes, the computer consoles and the empty Cola
bottles. The woman’s husband – a cadaverous twitch of a man in a Liverpool
shirt and combat trousers – stands with his arm around his Dad, precariously set
up on a bar stool like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

‘Hello,’
I say, with as much positivity as I can manage.

‘All
right, mate?’ The old man smiles and stares.

Jack
is lying with his legs drawn up to his chest on a boxy two-seater sofa, hugging
a Harry Potter quilt around him. He groans and squeezes his eyes shut.

‘Jack’s bad with the stomach,’ says the woman,
going to stand behind her son and ruffling his hair.

‘So what’s been happening?’ I ask them.

‘He’s
been off school the last couple of days. We rang the doctor when it wasn’t
getting any better, and he said get an ambulance.’

‘Has
he been sick?’

‘No.’

‘Diarrhoea?’

‘No.
He had a big poo this morning. He’s never had trouble in that department.’

She
looks at her husband, who seems more intent on operating his Dad to make him seem
alive.

‘What
about eating and drinking? When did Jack last have anything?’

‘I
dunno. An hour ago? Pizza, with the rest of us. But not as much as he normally
does.’

‘So
– Jack? Tell me about this pain in your tummy. Can I have a look?’

He
groans but nods. I lift the quilt up, and then his t-shirt.

‘Can
you point to where the pain is?’

He
makes a fluttering kind of gesture across his lower half.

‘Can
I have a feel?’

He
nods. But apart from some anxious wincing before I’ve even laid a finger, it
doesn’t provoke much.

‘Okay.
Thank you. You can pull your t-shirt down now. And if you had to describe the
pain, what would you say? I know it’s difficult. But what would you say – a burning
pain? Stabbing? Does it come and go? Or is it on the whole time? Hmm?’

He
winces again.

‘Hammering.’

‘Hammering?’

‘Like
someone’s hammering down there. With a hammer.’

‘Okay.’

I
take his temperature. Normal.

I
write some things down on the board.

‘Has
Jack had any pain relief? Paracetamol, that kind of thing?’

‘No.
He doesn’t like tablets.’

‘You
can get it in liquid form. You know – for kids.’

‘Well
we haven’t got any.’

I
put the clipboard down.

‘I
don’t think it’s too bad. He’s a good colour, he doesn’t have a temperature or
anything.’

‘That’s
probably why the doctor said call an ambulance, then. Any hint of breathing
problems and they’re bound to call us out. Understandably. But I think the breathing
thing was probably anxiety. He seems quite comfortable now. But having said all
that, it’s difficult with abdo pain. My guess is it’s probably just a virus,
but to be safe we’d better take a little trip down the hospital.’

‘Yeah, I think so. Don’t you, hun?’

‘Whatever
you think, love.’

‘I
don’t want to take no chances.’

‘Okay.
Let’s get your stuff together then.’

‘Are
we all going?’ says the husband through his Dad.

‘No
– there’s really only room for Jack and Mum. But I’m sure everything’s okay. No
doubt they’ll send him back home pretty quick.’

‘You
go,’ says the husband. ‘I’ll stay here with the old feller.’ The old feller swivels
his head and grins.

I
pick up my bag, but just as I’m turning to go out of the door, another figure steps
out from under the stairs, a young girl, thickly built, bloodless and white,
like a farmer’s daughter kept all her life in a barn. Folds of flesh bulge out
of the sides of her loose silk shift, her hair teased out in clumps, one single
black eyebrow in a ragged crayon line across her forehead, and a mouth drawn
back in a stumpy smile. She puts her arm across the door and leans in to
examine me closely.

Wynn - Me too! It was a bit like Enid Blyton meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Jacks - No - he would never knowingly eat a vegetable. In fact he def had a kind of stuffed crust look to him. And yep - way too many cats. One is company, two is erm... okay, three is technically an infestation...

Hi Spence, bit off topic here - but my office window overlooks the main approach to the local hospital. every day an nhs ambulance with 'pathway support' emblazoned down it zooms past. Colleagues and I are ripe with theories as to what it means in nhs jargon, but suspect none of them are right - can you enlighten us?

Thanks MarianneI imagine it's a reference to 'alternative care pathways' - one of the buzz-phrases for ambulance provision these days. It means that if you call 999 you shouldn't necessarily expect to go to hospital, but that the ambulance clinician will decide which is the most appropriate pathway for you (GP / Out of Hours / Paramedic Practitioner / Intermediate Care etc).

Some of our trucks have got FAST written on the side (the stroke acronym, but you'd be surprised how many people think it's to do with how we drive...)

The little girl hardly seems real in the midst of all that. It's almost as if you bumped into a garden sprite who led you to your desitination and vansihed. With the descriptions of the place and the people, I prefer that theory to the reality of it all.